


Here’s the Mail it Never Fails (makes me wanna wag my tail)

by Dandee



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race (US) RPF
Genre: F/F, Post-Apocalypse, Violence, mail
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-24 17:34:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30075834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dandee/pseuds/Dandee
Summary: Katya’s got a job to do. Trixie’s just trying to make it.a collective of drabbles
Relationships: Trixie Mattel & Katya Zamolodchikova, Trixie Mattel/Katya Zamolodchikova
Comments: 6
Kudos: 16





	1. Chapter 1

There’s a spider on the wall, and Trixie’s thankful for the company.

She decidedly named her Charlotte, in the first five minutes of noticing her new roommate as she sat in her bosses’ old wingback chair. The next forty-five minutes were spent with Trixie half-reading her book, side-eyeing the spider. And here they are, an hour later, book face down on the armrest as the last bits of the sun slide over downtown and into the office, Trixie gazing at the only other living breathing thing in the room.

Do spiders breathe? Of course they do.

Being alone for the last eight months has made Trixie weird. She knows this.

Eight months after she'd fled her apartment, the aftermath of The Cleanse cast a quiet shadow over San Francisco unlike anything Trixie would have ever imagined. The dust had settled simply in the fact that most everyone had left-- where or how, she didn’t know. And to be fair, she’d rather not know.

The regret of most of her adult life had been that she’d dropped out of school and went down the path of a two-job grind, but it proved beneficial Post-Cleanse. She’d fled her apartment with two keys in hand- one to a deteriorating high-rise on the outskirts of the city, and another to a Dollar Tree a few miles down.

She rests her chin against her knuckles as Charlotte inches toward the Christmas lights above the kitchen hallway.

“I hope-” Trixie croaks, then blinks. She realizes it’s been one of those days where she hasn’t spoken at all. She clears her throat and continues. “I hope you like it here. I’ve tried to make it... well, I’ve tried.”

Trixie _had_ tried. She’d swiped what she could from her old store to make this law firm as homey as her apartment had once felt. She’d hung curtains over the blinds and laid out a tablecloth over the kitchen table and lit cheap candles at night. She’d read every shitty paperback novel she could find, - hell, she’d even started “crafternooning”. She had done everything she could to distract herself from her grim reality, and it still wasn’t enough. Nothing could drown out the sound of the Others at night.

Sometimes she wished she’d listened to her manager.

“Listen ho,” Jasmine had said, slinging her bag over her shoulder, “I’m giving you one last chance to change your mind. You comin’ with me or not?”

When she’d turned her down, Jasmine had pursed her lips and slapped the store keys into Trixie’s palm, warning her to pace herself with the fruit snacks and to thoroughly inspect the canned olives before she’d disappeared into dawn. The low ding of the cowbell hanging from the door signified the last time she’d seen Jasmine, or anyone, and sometimes Trixie can still hear it, followed by a long ringing in her ears.

Sharon had just given her keys to the firm so she could work late. Less benevolent, but practical all the same.

A few loud pops from outside makes Trixie jump, then slack, sinking further into the wingback chair and pulling her sweater tighter against her. She breathes deep through her nose, holding her breath for four seconds, a shaky sigh escaping her as distant laughter calls down the street.

She’s on the twenty-seventh floor, and it’s a long way up. These fuckers come every night and bang shit around, taking whatever they can to survive but they’ve never made it up to her floor. They will though, Trixie’s sure of it. They’ll come.

It’s bittersweet, watching Charlotte settle in while Trixie’s on her way out. She plays with the idea of catching her and taking her along for the ride, but lets the thought slip away just as soon as it comes. She wonders what it would look like, if she ever made it back here one day- she imagines the entire floor spun with web, a wonderland for Charlotte and her future spider-boyfriend and all their little spider babies. She smiles at the thought of someone getting a fairy tale, out of all of this.


	2. Chapter 2

Trixie’s weighed her options. She’s thought about this all day, every day for three days. That’s not rash, right?

Right?

Her stomach does a flip when she catches the bright red number three on the door in front of her. She grabs the railing, slowing her steps. She doesn’t sit on the stairs, because she knows she won’t go further. So she just stands.

“Breathe,” Trixie whispers. Saying it aloud is supposed to make it more real, but it doesn’t. One thing that Trixie has learned throughout all of this is that she’s really, really fucking bad at calming herself down.

“It’s just like you’re going to the store.” It is. She can just pretend, make herself believe that she’s just doing a little monthly sweep, grabbing some things and coming right back. She technically _could_ do that if she wanted to. Nothing’s set in concrete here. Still, her blood pressure rises and her head begins to pound.

The facts are simple: if she stays here, she’ll be found. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but eventually. And she’ll be killed. The solution?

Literally leaving without a plan, without any direction or any idea of where to go. She’s just… putting on her backpack and walking.

Her exhale comes out hard, and her breath hitches.

“Shhh.. you’re okay,” she says. Did her lip just quiver? That lip is not quivering. This isn’t happening today.

She channels all of her inner Brene and lets go of the railing, mechanically walking down the stairs. She doesn’t stop when she reaches the last door. Instead she shoves it open, so hard that it bangs against the outer wall.

Trixie lunges after the door in vain, it’s too late, it was loud. It was loud as fuck.

The early sun stings her eyes. She holds on to her backpack straps and peers down the street, then whirls around, her frizzy pony following over her shoulder. Both options are hot, dry and dusty.

 _Go. Just go_.

She turns back around.

Her legs are like jello, in the sense that she can’t feel them as she burns off. Sharon had told her a long time ago that her first choice was usually the right choice- even though there's not much logic in that, it’s quicker than eeny-meeny-miney. She heads in the direction of the sun.

The first couple of hours aren’t so bad.

It’s her usual route to the Dollar Tree, and she knows it well. There’s not much here but blown-out windows of decaying restaurants, mildewed chalkboard signs advertising specials on the sidewalk. She might have modified those specials with her own personal chalk, once or twice. If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry.

Passing the Dollar Tree makes things unpleasant. Trixie allows herself the option to turn around as long as she can, until she’s a least another two blocks away. And then with a swift flick of her knife, she slips it between her knuckles and keeps moving.


	3. Chapter 3

Her hot pink Skechers aren’t the best. She can feel every bit of the pavement as she pounds into it, and she wishes to god she’d tied her laces tighter.

The woman behind Trixie breathes heavy, ragged, hot on her heels. The sound of the woman’s feet pounding in time with her own makes Trixie’s heart sink, makes her want to cry and it slows her down. She’s past the point of adrenaline- she’s panicking inside, and it’s about to get her got, gal.

She can’t help but remember the old NatGeo shows, the ones with the impalas running helplessly. That’s what this is, right now- she has no fucking plan, nowhere to go. Her calves are burning and her sides are throbbing and her vision’s blurring.

And they’re laughing.

The woman behind her giggles and someone farther behind them cackles and caws. She’s not being hunted by lions today, oh no. She’s about to get ripped apart by fucking hyenas, a death with no dignity.

She tries really hard not to think about what they’ll do to her when they catch her, but trying to push those thoughts out just makes them stronger. Still, her legs keep moving. Her shoulders are weak, like they’re about to cave into her fucking body but she’s still going. She wonders if there could be serenity here, if there could be some sort of inner peace with that fact that she’s about to die. Is this what acceptance feels like? Wanting to cry, wanting to give up but just trying your best? Fuck your feelings, do it anyway?

Her thoughts are cut short when a man rips around the corner up ahead, stopping to grin like the Cheshire Cat at the sight of her. He hurls toward her, into a sprint.

Trixie dashes into the middle of the street, bee-lining toward an alley, but the man gains on her. She shuffles back to the other side, then back into the street, and somehow ends up in a doorway of an old confectionery. In a last ditch effort in maintaining some goddamn integrity, she snaps her blade back open and holds it out in front of her with a surprisingly steady hand.

The woman, pale with blue hair and fucking heart tattoo on her cheek? She laughs. She slows her steps, panting gruffly but she’s smirking all the same. She holds her hands up in what Trixie is absolutely certain is mockery.

“What’s the big deal?” she purrs, inching closer, “what’s the rush, babygirl?”

“Yeah, we just uh, we just wanna say hi,” the guy shrugs, rolling into a stroll and slipping his hands into the pockets of his gray sweatpants.

Another woman strides up along the opposite sidewalk, tall and gangly and floppy in her movements, a now familiar high pitched cackle echoing off the brick buildings and down the street. And one more, a petite girl with sunglasses and a bob with bangs? Bangs. Walks up.

As they move in, Trixie moves her knife back and forth, and she can see this piteous scene in her head, can see it from a bird’s eye view. She’s having an out of body experience right here, right now and it’s so fucking sad.

When she opens her mouth to elicit her best _I’ll fucking kill you_ , nothing comes out. Alternatively she gives the most pathetic, squeaky little noise she’s ever heard come out of anyone in her life.

And it’s a laugh track, from all of them, on cue. The full on hardy harrs. So much for dying with dignity.

“Aww, baby,” heart-face girl coos, reeling from what seems to be the best joke she’s heard all day, “let’s just— why don’t you just give that to me, hmm? Come on.”

“Why don’t I cut that basic-ass tattoo right off your face, bitch?”

Trixie’s not surprised but… she’s glad. She’s proud to get her quick lips working again, even if it’s not gonna save her ass- seeing the look on that dumb bitch’s face, the way it just falls makes it completely worth it.

“Guess you just loved Harley Quinn, huh?” she keeps going, rapid-fire. “You and every other white girl in the state. Did you just _love_ being Harley for Halloween? I bet you never read a DC Comic book in your life.”

“Laila,” the man hums, chiding almost, right as heart-face begins to glitch.

“Oh, did I strike a nerve?” Trixie can’t stop. If she’s gonna go down, she’s gonna go down reading the dogshit out of every single one of these people.

The way in which Laila’s shoulders rise and fall becomes a bit more exaggerated, but she doesn’t move. She keeps her eyes on sweatpants guy.

“What a mouth,” he says, side stepping. The up-down he gives Trixie sends a lump straight to her throat, and she regrets wearing her Dollywood tank, even if it is her favorite. She finds herself absentmindedly tugging at the frayed ends of her shorts.

“You got a fancy pair of lips there, girl.” He runs his tongue over his bottom lip and claps his hands together. “I’d like to see what they can do.”

He steps toward her and before Trixie can think, she reacts. She swipes her blade into the open air, and her voice cracks as she shouts, “Get away from me, you inbred motherfucker-”

He counters, everyone does. A few _ssshick sshicks_ and everyone’s got a blade.

“Easy now,” the man says, eyes wide behind his extended arm, “Easy.”

Trixie lunges forward with another swipe, and another. “Inbred-“ _swipe_ “ -like a fucking-“ _swipe_ “-turkey-“ _swipe_ “sandwich-”

It’s the back of Laila’s hand that cracks hard across her face, sending her to her knees. Trixie ends up on her back, with Laila straddling her hips and wrestling her blade from her grip. A few more blows to the face, and she plucks it with ease from Trixie’s fingers.

“Oh! Get the bag,” Bangs says, voice delightful and sweet.

Trixie’s rolled to the side, arms twisting painfully as her backpack is yanked from her. Laila tosses it to the side and pins her back down, this time much closer to her face.

“Maybe I should give you a new tattoo,” she murmurs, eyes flickering from Trixie’s eyes to her lips, then back. “Since you seem to like mine so much.” She runs the tip of the blade along her cheek, her expression borderline wanton.

Trixie’s breath comes out hard and back in fast, she manages to spit out a _fuck you_. It feels right to be spitting, to be the dog that foams at the mouth until the very end. She ruts against Laila which earns her a cut to the face- a quick streak of fire across her cheek, white hot and searing.

She bites her lip to keep from crying out, from even granting Laila the satisfaction of a whimper.

Adding insult to injury, Trixie can only watch as Bangs turns her backpack upside down, the last tube of MAC Zoom Lash known to man rolling down the sidewalk. Gangly Girl runs up and starts swiping all that Trixie had collected from the Dollar Tree- canned goods, twine, water. Sudoku.

“Like it, Jay?” Laila asks, jerking Trixie’s chin to show off the gash like a prized pig, “should I keep going?”

The man named Jay stares through Trixie, looks right into her eyes and yet right past her, like she’s some meaningless backdrop on his set. He chuckles without a smile and says,

“Do what you want. I don’t need her face.”

Everything slows down for Trixie.

The sounds of Laila’s giggles are muffled. She doesn’t watch Jay’s shoes as he steps away, she doesn’t struggle against Laila as she pushes her face back into the pavement.

The question comes- at first fleeting, in a blip a moment- if she did everything she could. In this moment, and in the entirety of her time here. What immediately follows that is the most horrible feeling, the worst surge of fear she’s ever felt in her life.

She can’t help but wonder if she’s wasted her time here, on this piece of space-broccoli. If any of it meant anything at all.


	4. Chapter 4

The tip of the blade kisses her cheek, then stops.

Laila’s focus has shifted- Trixie’s eyes travel up the length of her neck as it cranes over her to look down the road. Bangs is staring too, they all are- they’re all staring off in the same direction and it doesn’t make Trixie feel Better. She can’t help the rolodex in her brain, flipping through the things that could scare these fuckers. When Laila scrambles to her feet, Trixie sits up.

After a moment, she hears it.

A vehicle.

A _car_.

A white cagey box car with a rattling engine, racing toward them behind the vapors that dance above the road.

If everyone else weren’t slack-jawed, Trixie would call this a mirage. As this absolute flying lawnmower nears them, she recognizes it as a mail truck. She can’t look away- she can’t even remember the last time she saw a moving vehicle. She can’t do anything but brace herself on the pavement, watching it veer toward the sidewalk, brakes squealing as it slows.

Instead of catching a glimpse of the driver, Trixie is met with two cadet blue eyes behind the double-barreled nose of a shotty.

It’s here that Trixie loses her hearing, like, for real.

She can barely make out Laila’s wail over the ringing in her ears.

She smells- no, she _tastes_ pennies, and Trixie wipes her cheek with the back of her hand. Her hand comes back red- and her shirt, her legs, they’re speckled with blood. Not her blood.

“Get in!”

Trixie’s head snaps up. The driver is looking at her. The shotgun is lowered.

“What?”

“Get in, come on!”

The red flags are at full fucking mast with this bitch- this crazy looking bitch with her blonde braids and her red lips- she’s literally waving her on, coaxing her into what is for all intents and purposes a white candyman van, with a fucking rifle in her hand.

And it’s the only way out. Trixie’s already on her feet.

She turns back for her bag but stops at the sight of Jay and Gangly Girl sprinting in the other direction and Laila, on the ground, propped up by Bangs. She’s screaming, hands trembling over what used to be her knee. There’s a large chunk of something lain in front of her and Trixie looks away before she can confirm what it is.

“Come on come on come on-“

The wheels are already moving as Trixie grabs a handle and swings into the truck.

“Hang on,” the woman says, tucking the rifle down next to her seat. The tires squeak when she punches the gas.

“Jesus, okay,” Trixie dithers. She shifts her weight from one foot to the other, trying to avoid crushing the packages and letters that litter the floorboard. There also really isn’t a seat, just boxes and mail bins.

“Just move the shit, sorry-- just sit wherever.”

She realizes that this driver’s got a cigarette dangling from her lips, tugging it away once she’s got her gun situated and holding it to the window.

“Okay, I’ll just, uh,” Trixie scoots a box, hovering over the seat.

“Here,” the woman reaches for the mail bin, “let me just-”

“Don’t _fucking touch_ me,” Trixie spits.

This woman’s eyes aren’t big, like, in the way that they’re too big for her face, but they feel like they should be. They might be glassy, or maybe it’s the color, or maybe it’s the structure of her face, or how red her lips are. Or it might even be the simple fact that Trixie hasn’t looked into the eyes of another living being in months- either way- Trixie is somehow, in some way, shocked. There isn’t any other way to describe it other than just… surprise.

The woman seems shocked too, for reasons more obvious.

“I’m _not_ ,” she says, brows scrunched. “Look,” she lifts her hand away from the mail bin and brings it back to the steering wheel. “Look,” she tosses the cigarette out the window and grabs the wheel, “ten and two, okay?”

Trixie says nothing, eyeing the rifle wedged between her seat and the gear.

“Just toss that box in the back,” the woman says, eyes back on the road, “we got a long drive.”

Trixie can feel the bile rising in her throat, and she swallows hard.

The woman jumps a little, and looks back at Trixie. “Not like that. I didn’t mean it like-”

“Did you shoot her?”

She blinks and wrinkles her nose. “Yeah? I did?”

“Oh my god,” Trixie breathes, then groans, “You actually fucking shot her. Oh my god-”

“Yeah, you’re welcome?”

“You,” Trixie points her finger, “you have a fucking gun, you shoot people-”

“She was gonna kill you!” She’s high pitched and defensive, but just flighty enough that you’d think she was justifying an obscure recipe for tomato sauce.

“Oh god.” Trixie traces her hand over her throat, “Oh god I can’t. Pull _over_.”

“Listen, why don’t you-- don’t flatter yourself mama. I’m not gonna kill you. I have no desire to kill you. There would be no point in killing you.”

“No, pull over.”

The woman’s eyes dart to the road, then back to Trixie,

“Wait are you- are you gonna throw up?”

Trixie swallows, then gasps, “Just lemme out-”

“Oh please don’t. Please don’t throw up. If you throw up, I’m gonna throw up-”


End file.
